A new co-working space aiming to inspire creativity and revitalise Kalgoorlie-Boulder’s central business district is set to open for a six-month pilot run this weekend.

Borrowing from similar concepts in Perth and regional WA, local entrepreneurs Tim Neeson and Paul Ybanez are hopeful their new initiative — located in an empty office block at St Barbara’s Square — will drive positive social change and provide opportunities for creative enterprises in the Goldfields city.

Mr Neeson said the partners had poured about $10,000 and a considerable amount of time and energy into developing the co-working hub in response to a post-boom retail downturn that had left many of Hannan Street’s shopfronts bare, as well as a desire to help local creatives get their ideas off the ground.

“This property here came on the market and we’ve been working with the landlord to develop this space and develop a hub for Kalgoorlie,” he said. “I think the economy’s been going on a sort of a downward ramp for the last seven or eight years, so what do you do?

“Do you do nothing and wait for someone else to fix everything, or do you just get involved and start making things happen?”

The project has been in the works since October and is also inspired by the Renew Newcastle model, a program that has been around for the past decade in the New South Wales coal mining hub to fill empty shop spaces with short-term creative projects.

The office is fitted out with computers and tablets, gimbals for smartphone filmmaking and other fun gadgets, but Mr Neeson and Mr Ybanez also want it to provide a catalyst for community members to develop their own concepts of what a revitalised St Barbara’s Square and Kalgoorlie-Boulder might look like.

It comes as the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder progresses its own project to redevelop the CBD, already partly funded by an $8 million Royalties for Regions grant.

Mr Ybanez and Mr Neeson’s resources include a virtual map of Kalgoorlie-Boulder constructed with 93 million blocks in the computer program Minecraft to plan ideas for the town’s future.

“We’re hoping to get a lot of people, young and old, to help recreate the CBD for a start ... just get building Kalgoorlie in the virtual environment and then we’ll develop that as much as we can and open that up to creative ideas,” Mr Neeson said.

“What do you want Kalgoorlie to look like in five or 10 years? We can prototype ideas, we can show people what Kalgoorlie might look like, things like that.”

The Space at 248 will have a public open day on Saturday at the Explore the Goldfields community Expo in St Barbara’s Square, but it is not just digital start-ups its founders want to get on board.

“I think in Kalgoorlie, people are over waiting for things to happen,” Mr Neeson said. “We’ve just got to get in and make them happen.

“The more people we can get on board who are passionate, driven, positive people, get them together.

“Get artists, engineers, entrepreneurs together, we can achieve a lot.”